Sun Halo 01 November 2010

The Sun, 22° halo, Parhelic Circle.. Sundog and Venus ?

This was one of the most wonderful halos I have ever seen! Thanks to a friend, who alerted me via sms just after 9 am. Only after half of an hour I've realized, that I haven't sent the ANFO! As it went to the recipients, a number of e-mails came into my Inbox. It was nice to realize, that more and more people do look up an find something fascinating up there.

The 22° halo around the sun was bright and colorful and not quite 22° in appearance - it was rather elliptic. This wouldn't normally be very noticeable by eye, but on the images it does show. There was another circle, larger than main halo, with it's center somewhere outside of the main halo. As sees in the images, this circle was going through the Sun, but this is not always the case. This is, much more rare effect of atmospheric optics, known as Parhelic circle

In some images there are bright spots of light, which could be mistaken for Sundog, but I think, these are rather internal reflections from the camera lenses. There also were comments about bright spots (red in color), close to the Sun, which were "identified" as Venus. This is almost impossible, because Venus was about 7° from the Sun at the time and the light, reflected by thin crescent of Venus wouldn't be seen through the glare of the Sun .

Oh yes, there were also concerns, that this could be something to do with the spaceship from another galaxy..

Thank you all for sending your images!